Land mines, because of their high destructive force, have been increasingly used in regions of crisis and in battlefield applications and pose a significant danger to vehicles encountering them and their occupants. Even in the case of peace keeping forces, there is a high probability that vehicles will encounter a mine and it is of considerable interest to be able to provide appropriate armoring for vehicles, especially for vehicles under-structures so as to make them more resistant to mine detonations.
Existing approaches, however, have the drawback that they may increase the weight of the vehicle and thereby making them less maneuverable or decrease the useful load.
While modern vehicles which have been designed to resist mine detonations are less sensitive to the problem and often have their chassis constructions and designs integrated with mine detonation resistant principles, it is nevertheless of interest to provide improved mine detonation blast protection for vehicles.
EP 12 75 928 A2 describes a system in which the entire bottom plate has a concave configuration with a large radius of curvature whose center of curvature lies below the vehicle. Such a configuration of the bottom plate has the advantage of a greater deformation resistance to counteract the explosion pressure of a landmine detonation and precludes some of the danger of buckling of the structure which can occur in an outwardly convex understructure. The drawback of this earlier arrangement is the high fabrication cost of the bottom plate which requires a rolling of high strength armoring steel, the handling of which involves very expensive technology.